She wants a government body established immediately to take sole responsibility for adoptions.

"We've experienced it first-hand -- we tried to adopt in Australia and couldn't because we were overwhelmed by the hurdles and obstacles they put in our way," Furness said.

But the adoption process in the US took less than a year.

Furness -- in Australia while Jackman films the Baz Lurhmann epic Australia -- is on a crusade to help the couples with "horror stories" of futile attempts to adopt.

"I'm fortunate," she says. "I have two beautiful children and that's why people come to me and say, 'Deb can you help me?'.

"I tell them it will be long, expensive and may not happen."

Furness says it is "an outrage and an embarrassment" that Australia ranks last in inter-country adoption throughout the world.

"It breaks my heart to think there are thousands of abandoned children overseas waiting for loving families to take them, but the Government is making it so hard."

A parliamentary inquiry found in 2005 that the "current system is not working" and that adoption was a low priority for state and federal governments.

It recommended the Federal Government plays a bigger role in the process -- to make it quicker and less expensive.

While the Government said it "accepted" most of the inquiry's recommendations, it did nothing to implement them. Instead, it devised more restrictions -- announcing last week legislation to stop same-sex Australian couples adopting a child overseas. The child would not be granted a visa.

Furness is worried the Government's attitude may be a return of a "White Australia policy".

"This is a humanitarian issue. Australia has a generous spirit, yet this to me reeks of fear and a lack of generosity," she says. "You see it with the refugee crisis as well."

SHE said she was prompted to speak out on the issue when she read of the plight of a Sydney woman whose adopted baby was still in China because the Immigration Department would not grant her a visa.

"When I hear these stories, it breaks my heart. I know what happens to these babies; they end up institutionalised or on the streets," Furness said.

Denise Calligeros, 45, revealed this week she had been trying for 13 years to adopt but has been rejected for a second time because now she is too old.

The adoption crisis has escalated since 1998 when Australia signed the Hague Convention in respect to the protection of children and adoption.

The agreement resulted in the Federal Attorney-General delegating the administration to state governments. But that stopped voluntary organisations from helping facilitate inter-country adoptions.

As a result, queues have grown into thousands and some states have stopped taking registrations.

Furness says the Department of Community Services in NSW is too busy coping with local issues of child abuse to worry about inter-country adoptions.

"You have children who are abandoned and homeless and you have people desperate to have a child, but because of this bureaucracy and lack of resources they can't," she says.

Adoption has become such a long and expensive process for Australian couples that many simply give up.

Some states have fees up to $10,000 to lodge the initial application --and it is non-refundable, even if the couple is unsuccessful.

On top of that there are airfares, visas, medical and processing bills. The total outlay can reach $40,000.

Ricky Brisson, whose program to assist couples to adopt was stopped by the Government three years ago, said: "The costs are becoming more prohibitive and a lot of families are giving up."

She said it now took about seven years to process an adoption, which meant some couples failed because they grew too old.

"We have thousands of kids waiting for families and thousands of people in Australia looking to adopt them, but we have a system which is useless in delivering a proper service," she said.

In 2004-05, 410 overseas babies from 25 countries were adopted in Australia -- compared with 21,000 in the US.

Furness said the process in the US was quick and inexpensive "and not made impossible like it is here".

"We are the most blessed people in the world, but I have friends here who are coming up against so many brick walls," she said

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About Me

The National Adoption and Surrogacy Center, LLC, concentrates in building families through adoption and surrogacy law. We give legal counsel to intended parents, surrogates, egg donors, sperm donors, adoptive parents, and birth mothers in their quest for building families. We represent local and international singles and couples from either traditional or nontraditional families.